How and what do autistic children see? Emotional, perceptive and social peculiarities reflected in more recent examinations of the visual perception and the process of observation in autistic children.

Autistic symptoms become apparent at the earliest during the 2nd-3rd month of life when the spontaneous registration of the meaning of specific-visual stimuli (eyes, configuration of the mother's face) do not occur and also learning experiences by reason of mimic and gestures repeatedly shown by the interaction partner can neither evoke a social smile nor stimulate anticipational behaviour. Even with increasing age an empathetic perception of feelings in the corresponding mimical gesticular formation is very difficult and they themselves are only insufficiently able to express their own feelings intelligibly to everyone. As mimic and gestures are, however, visually perceived, the autistic perceptive child's competence is of great importance. On the basis of the examinations of visual perception (retinal pathology, tunnel vision) perceptual processing (recognition of feelings, sex and age) and the disintegration of multimodal stimuli it can be presumed that social and emotional deficits are to be seen in connection with a deviant perceptive interpretation of the world and irregular processing on the basis of a neuro-biological handicap (the absence of a genetic determined reference-system for emotionally significant stimuli), which can have various causes (comp. Gillberg 1988) and also impede the adequate expression of feelings in mimic, gestures and voice. Autistic people see, experience and understand the world in a specific way in which and by which they differ from non-handicapped people.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)